Jason Kenney’s utter beating in the media last week was apparently not a turning point in Alberta’s ongoing COVID disaster. We’re hurtling along in exactly the same direction again this week, and at this point things are starting to get a little absurd.

Alberta's COVID disaster isn't distracting the UCP from their awful little projects, like the CEC's new 'ethical oil' billboard campaign

In a press conference Tuesday regarding the COVID situation Jason Kenney implored Justin Trudeau to show more humility and less hubris, then successively rejected the premises of all questions about his own performance. Justice Minister Kaycee Madu joined him to announce that hospitals had been added as a protected area to the UCP’s Critical Infrastructure Defence Act, a.k.a. the anti-protester ‘Bill 1,’  which was thrown together as a sop to folks hating on environmentalists and land defenders, and is expected to be torn to shreds over unconstitutionality if it ever gets before the courts.

No new measures to combat the pandemic itself were announced—do Kenney and the ministers think a symbolic crackdown on anti-vaxers is all we need? There haven’t been a lot of protests in Alberta after the extremely poor reception demonstrators got the first few times they tried, but there is a looming strike by Alberta’s nurses widely expected in the near future.

Journalists asked, unsuccessfully, for an explanation as to why Kenney refused an offer of help from Newfoundland, who were ready to send staff to our overwhelmed hospitals. But he did explain that he expects things to get worse. Not until mid-October are we even going to hit the peak of this wave, he expects.

Listening to the Premier talk in circles and try to deflect blame while the province careens into disaster really grinds you down. At least a few reporters are still sticking it to him.

Sundries

• If what Jeff Davison’s campaign is doing with the third-party advertiser Calgary Tomorrow isn’t against Alberta’s municipal election financing laws, then the laws aren’t worth much. And I actually suspect it isn’t against the letter of those laws.
  
  
• That UCP vice-president who was talking to the press about calls for a leadership review against Kenney has been fired from the party.
  
  
• Superstore workers in Alberta are about to go on strike, frustrated by a severe decline in working conditions throughout the pandemic.
  
  
• The new messaging from UCP MLAs seems to be an attempt to pin the COVID disaster not on UCP policy, but on bureaucrats at Alberta Health Services. Doctors are not impressed.
  
  
• The Canadian Energy Centre has done big ad buys in New York City and Washington, D.C. urging passers-by to buy Canadian oil products. Presumably the hope is that pedestrians will see these billboards in Times Square and immediately get on Grubhub to order some thick, delicious Canadian bitumen.

This is the online version of the Progress Report email newsletter. Don't depend on some social media or search engine algorithm to find this content in the future. Sign up to get updates on the most important local political issues in your inbox every week. If you like what we do at the Progress Report there is also one big way you can support us and that's by becoming a monthly donor. The regular donations of the 500 or so regular monthly donors keeps this small, independent media shop going.